


The Inky Collar

by fiendlikequeen



Series: Sherlock (TV) Dæmon!AU Series [3]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 00:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiendlikequeen/pseuds/fiendlikequeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arctura wonders if she and Irene will be able to deceive Sherlock Holmes. Irene assures her that they will make him dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inky Collar

“Are you sure he’s going to come, Irene?” spoke the voice from around her ankle.

The beautiful redheaded Kate and her elegant Irish setter dæmon had just left the room and Irene was alone. With unhurried motions, she began to remove her peignoir, attiring herself for the guest she expected.

“Of course he is, Arctura,” she said, and reached down to where a cobra was curling its way up her leg. She ran her hand down the length of her dæmon’s sleek body, lifting her in her arms before placing the snake about her shoulders.

There Arctura curled like an inky collar, twining twice around Irene’s neck before lifting her head, both lazy and wary.

“And what makes you so sure?” asked Arctura.

Now, Arctura was at ease, her long dark body limp and relaxed, her tongue occasionally flicking out to taste the air or touch Irene’s cheek. But when she was angry, she became far more formidable as she raised herself to her enemy, as her hood flared, revealing her pale throat but also her sharp, venomous fangs.

Irene had always loved her Arctura’s form, had always admired the dæmon that could be so still and lethargic when she wanted to, yet could, at a moment’s notice, rise up in a form that would frighten even the bravest, brashest dæmon.

Not to mention that her clients loved Arctura’s long and sleek shape, that their dæmons, while Irene dealt with the humans, would lie prone and swooning in Arctura’s gentle but inescapable coils.

 “Jim said he would, and you know that Jim knows how to make him dance,” said Irene, and stroked Arctura’s head with an absent finger.

“Better than we will?” said her dæmon.

Irene smiled, the expression curling slowly over her face the way Arctura curled slowly about her neck. “No,” she said. “No, we will make him dance in a way Jim never could.”

Arctura bumped her head against Irene’s chin and Irene kissed her smooth scales. They were both silent for a moment and, Irene knew, quietly reflecting on the same thing. Like good predators, she and her dæmon were content to sit and wait, to be patient. They would wait, quiet and still, thinking, considering, weighing options, planning tactics. And then their prey would join them and the fun of the hunt could begin.

They did not have to wait very long.

“Look, there,” said her dæmon, and flicked her head towards the window.

Irene pushed aside the curtain and watched as two men approached the house. One, a shorter, sandy-haired man, was accompanied by a Mastiff dæmon, a big and burly creature that looked like a force to be reckoned with and made the man’s slightly smaller stature seem a touch comical.

But she disregarded him immediately, and focused her attention instead on the man beside him. He was holding his face, evidently wounded in some way. There was a clerical collar about his neck, but Irene doubted that he was a vicar.

“Sherlock Holmes,” she breathed, and Arctura hissed as both beheld the prowling, heavy-footed panther that paced at his side, a dark-coloured creature whose own calm and imposing diffidence betrayed the Mr. Holmes’s ruse.

“We may have some trouble with him, Irene,” observed Arctura. She had stretched herself from Irene’s shoulders so far that the tip of her forked tongue now flicked against the glass of the window.

“Because you’re female?” said Irene, her brow creasing just a bit. She’d been admiring the raw power and formidability of that dæmon when Arctura interrupted her. “That shouldn’t be a problem, should it? Doesn’t stop us from knowing what plenty of men like, does it?”

Arctura gave a quiet hiss, no doubt remembering the problems her gender had caused for the two of them in the past. All the teasing, all the dirty looks, all the whispers of the fact that Irene Adler had a dæmon that was the same sex as herself.

Her parents, bless their hearts, had understood, as they were not bigoted as much as the world was. But at school, her classmates taunted her mercilessly for Arctura’s gender.

Of course, when Arctura had settled, the teasing had quietly died down. For no malicious child, despite the fact that Irene had a female dæmon, wanted to tease a girl with a sharp-fanged cobra curled about her neck.

Irene remembered how, at school, all her classmates had cowered the day Arctura had settled into her true form. The squirrel dæmon of one particularly nasty little girl had, upon seeing Arctura’s hood flared and her fangs bared, given a shriek of fright and had fainted in his human’s arms.

The girl had gone very white and never bothered Irene again, avoiding her and treating her with a sort of terrified deference.

And it had been a wonderful feeling. Irene had loved the power of it. She’d loved seeing everyone shrink back from her, their dæmons vanishing into their pockets or springing into their arms in an attempt to get away from Arctura.

The quiet voice of her dæmon brought her back to the present, back into the game that was now afoot.

“No. Because his dæmon’s male,” said Arctura. “Like us, they’re the same gender.”

And Irene smiled. “I’d like to see that stop us,” she said, and kissed Arctura. “Now, how does my battledress look?”

Her dæmon pulled back for a moment to admire Irene.

“It will give him a shock, no doubt,” she said.

Irene smiled once more. “Excellent. Let’s go meet the famous Sherlock Holmes, shall we?”

“Ah, yes. The clever detective in the funny hat,” replied Arctura. “This is going to be fun, isn’t it?”

“Undoubtedly,” said Irene.


End file.
